Did i over fire my stove? Smoke alarm triggered

[ctswf]

I have a drolet 1800i insert, I've been using it for 1 year.

I filled it the other day and forgot to close the air control in time. I walked in and noticed if you look through the top slot, where the blower pumps air out. the top of the stove was glowing bright red. I closed the air control, and not a minute later the smoke detector started going off.

Wife goes frantic as you can imagine, i ran around looking for smoke, and looked at the top of house for fire in the flue...

No smoke and the red glow went away after the air control was closed.

The wife complained of it smelling. Im wondering if i fired it hotter than ever, burning off some paint smell or high temp silicone triggering the smoke alarm? The flue was cleaned and ive used it for 1 month since, i doubt it can have a creosote fire yet.

With a face plate like this, how would one use a stove thermometer? I have no idea what my temps are

 

[zenoparadox]

A glowing top is an overfire, definitely.

Hitting a new high can certainly cause the stove to emit smells like it did when you first broke it in. I don't know enough though to definitely say the smell is only due to this.

The thermometer issue is similar on a HI300 insert. There aren't a lot of good options. Most of us put it in the air outlet, which corresponds to where you looked for the glowing top on your stove. The problem is that it is very hard to read in that position but people have been making marks on the side of the thermometer to get at least some reference points even if they cannot read exact numbers.

 

[ctswf]

I have peered in there before and seen a slight glow. No where near as bad as that over fire day.

I suppose i will get some temps with the faceplate off and try to get a basline

Would u say that any glow at all is probaby bad?

When the airflow is turned down it does not seem to glow at all. However i am not using hardwood at the moment

Also, i think it seems fine at the moment but what kind of damage could i have caused from an overfire. Should i cool down and check my liner with a snake camera?

 

[begreen]

The smoke detector went off because the paint was getting burned off in the area that was glowing as the stove overfired. There should never be any glowing of the stove top. That indicates the stove top is in the 900º+ territory and is being overfired. The stove may be ok, steel stoves are tough, but inspect for any damage to be sure. Look for warping of the baffle, sagging of the secondary tubes, stress cracks around the door and inside on the welds.

It's easy to get distracted when starting a fire. I now am in the habit of bringing a timer with me and setting it to 5 minutes if I am going to be away from the stove as it starts. A cellphone clock app has a timer feature.

 

[bholler]

We have started to offer auber remote thermometers with our installs. They have an alarm we set to let you know if the stove is getting to hot they also work well with inserts because the probe is small and can be put on the pipe or actual stove top.